


I'm Standing By You, Sister Fair

by letters2the0



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Family Feels, Gen, Healing, Hurt/Comfort, In This House Sisters Appreciate One Another, Sister-Sister Relationship, getting over trauma, if you read fanfiction to do some therapy-level catharsis for your own scars this one's for you, neither one is perfect and they will learn from each other, tapping into inner strengths
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-25
Updated: 2019-11-08
Packaged: 2020-10-28 04:56:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20772896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/letters2the0/pseuds/letters2the0
Summary: Robb is dead. Bran is dead. Rickon is dead. Jon is at the Wall, and most likely dead.Arya and Sansa are only missing, presumed dead. And if people think they won't cross hell and high water in the slim hope of finding each other, that's a much bigger presumption.Sister quest, healing, and friendship. Book-canon until the end of AFFC.





	1. Waking Up

It was cold, and it almost tricked her.

It was colder than it was yesterday, and it promised to be even colder tomorrow, and yet it would take twenty tomorrows, twenty hundred tomorrows, to be as cold as Winterfell. And yet Sansa woke with a smile on her lips that didn’t falter until her feet fell on scratchy carpet, the likes of which would never have been allowed had her mother been alive.

_Had her mother been alive._

Had her mother been alive, so many things would not have happened. So many things that Sansa wanted to bury her head under the pillow and wail louder than the winds. But her mother had died bereft of two daughters, not one, and Sansa could imagine her mother’s hands circled around her wrists, pulling her to the edge of the bed. She sat up straighter and pressed the backs of her hands into her eyes; it would not do for Arya to wake up alone and cry, saying, _“had my sister been alive….”_

That settled it, although it settled her stomach none. She stood up unsteadily and marched over to the closet. She couldn’t fathom how she’d find Arya yet, but she’d work on finding a finding-Arya-dress. That much she could do. And then she’d find the room in which she’d plan on how to find Arya, and find the food that she would eat while finding out how to find Arya. And then she would repeat it as endlessly as Petyr repeated his tale of love for Lysa, his claim, his protective love for Sweetrobin until the Vale forgot he had ever arrived as a stranger. As often as he called her daughter and bastard-born. As often as she called him “father” she would search for her sister, and one of them would have to prove true. 

Finding Arya would need daring. Arya was daring. Sansa needed to not act like Sansa, but she wasn’t sure how to act like Alayne. She wasn’t sure if Petyr’s mother would enjoy be kissed by her son in this way. But if she could act like _Arya_…..surely, nobody would think she was _Sansa._ She slowly smiled. That was a lot more fun than trying to imitate an Alayne she had no idea how to be. And if she was Arya-called-Alayne, she would surely think like an Arya-called-somebody-else, couldn’t she? She would find her, and she would…..

Rescue her? 

As if Arya needed rescuing. Ever.

Make a home with her? 

But where?

She took a deep breath in. Find her. The rest would come after. She had found the dress-for-finding-Arya—something plain, something torn, something she would never wear and Arya just might, in a pinch—and now she would find breakfast and a room. And then Arya. 

In that order.

Eventually.

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Arya woke with a start but no moonlight to show her the layout of the room. _No moonlight?_ Then—_yes_. She was at the House of Many Faces once more, as they slowly dissolved Arya Stark in water and let her dissipate, bubbling and changing color into a poison no could recognize or defend against. She breathed out, slowly, savoring the idea of Joffrey crumpling to the ground during a small council meeting, or at a tourney, or better yet, in front of his mother. And then his mother, and her brother, and the whole family….all of them quietly falling to the ground, felled by spoiled wine or too-hard blows in the training yard or carelessness in a letter opener….

There were a lot of ways to die in a castle, was all, and Arya was looking forward to finding out exactly how many could pass without looking suspicious. And then doubling that number, and watching the remaining lords look at each other with mistrust and fear, then with dawning horror as they realized there was no traitor in the midst, but _someone else._

Arya grinned—grimaced?—the aborted smile of someone who was restraining themselves not out of respect of societal boundaries for rejoicing over murder, but with the hope of erasing all impulse to personality, all natural differentiation and distinction. 

_All the better to kill you with, my dear,_ she thought, her face finally giving way into a twisted smile thinking of how the wolf in her mother’s stories would finally win, and when it mattered most. _You heard the stories. You were warned of the hunger of wolves. And I am coming for you._

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sansa had consulted the Vale’s maps of Westeros with the hope of pinpointing possible hideaways for Arya. The problem was that anywhere Arya could have gone, Sansa would have when Petyr killed Lysa, and there was nowhere to go. Unless Arya was roaming constantly, which was possible but twice as likely to get her killed by the bands of broken men marauding Westeros. 

Sansa flipped through the geography primers with an ache in her heart that was steadily becoming an ache behind her eyes as she fought against imagining her father here, with these same books, casually leafing through them far faster than she was in order to race Robert to the sept and back, perhaps before the master came back from his tower with the next assignment—she didn’t sob, but her breath was ragged and louder than it ought have been. _Father, father, where are you now?_ she thought with a desperate cry, afraid to speak her prayer less a passing maid bring Lord Baelish, who would quickly remove anything that might _distract_ Sansa from her work. She traced the outline of the continent, thinking of her father’s hands doing the same. _Father, guide me,_ she prayed. 

_Where is Arya, Father? You told me to look after her, the sun to my moon, the moon to my sun, but blood of my blood of my blood. Where is she, Father? I need her as I need you…._

Sansa started to cry, and the book fell from her hand with a thump. She picked it up, fiercely scrubbing her face. She shoved the books back on the shelf, sniffling, when her foot skidded. She had stepped on paper, some piece of the book that had been torn out and hastily placed inside, no doubt—

It had her Father’s handwriting on the outside.

_3—Volantis_, it read, and close by was _Pentos_ in a much larger scrawl. _2—Myr_, was accompanied by _no—definitely Lyr_. But number one was _Braavos_ in both her father’s handwriting and that of Robert Baratheon’s, she was sure of it. 

_Braavos?_ Sansa wondered as she looked over the familiar letters_\--even his i’s were the same—_uncertain of the best book to hide this treasure while hesitating to even let it out of her grip. She finally settled for putting it right back in the geography primer and resolved to come here more often for schooling; what other lost memories from her father could she find? Perhaps she could even wheedle Sweetrobin into coming and ensure her total privacy. No one wanted to talk with him more than they had to; it would be a sure way to prevent Petyr from appearing with a knowing smile and redirecting Sansa towards another project entirely. No, it was in everybody’s best interest to keep Sweetrobin busy and _away from them_, and Sansa remembered people treating Arya the same way. Once you were pliant, then they kept you closer to make you useful again and again. Maybe she should be a little less useful to Petyr and a little more to Sweetrobin; it’d guarantee the appreciation of the Vale household and still be a decent use of her to Petyr. 

She flipped the note over. The map showed the edge of Essos, and Braavos was circled. The boys had torn this out of their history book, or perhaps it had come loose after considerable wear and tear—the edges were frayed and the paper stained. On it, her father had written_—her father’s writing!—_a short list of words. _Canals, temples, Titan._ Robert had chimed in with _braavos, courtesans, sword smiths._ Was this a history lesson, or….

She remembered warm spring days spent in the godswood with her brothers and sister, and even Theon on occasion as the local authority of far-away places. They had imagined all the places that they would see, and had bargained with each other, arguing why they had the best case to leave Winterfell. One always had to stay behind to keep a Stark in Winterfell, and it usually fell to Rickon by the virtue that he couldn’t argue much, just shout out “Horses! Horses!” whenever it was his turn. _“You want no destination, you just want to ride anywhere,” Robb had said fondly while picking him up and swinging him around—_

Sansa smiled even as she choked back the tears. It was hard to remember. So, so hard. But it was better than forgetting there had ever been happiness; it made the misery sharper, but it gave hope for an end. At Kings’ Landing the Hound had been bitter and cruel in a different way than the rest of the Kingsguard; the others were drunk with power and pressed their new advantage of status with a thrill. The Hound threw biting comments but paced himself; his tempo of cruelty was slower, because he had a long, long way to go. There would be no end until Gregor killed him or Gregor’s company killed him killing Gregor. Sansa shuddered. She must remember that she came from embraces and in-jokes and happy secrets, the kind that were about what gifts were stuffed under the bed for Sevenmas. She could look for them again. She could build them up again. The Hound could not, for he had never seen.

So her father and Robert had wanted to go to Braavos. Maybe they had planned it as a last adventure together before shouldering the responsibilities of their separate houses on different sides of Westeros; as far as she knew, it was a trip they never took. War got in the way, unlike Sansa, who had always dreamed of going south. War took her south, and took her family too. 

_I only wanted to see my mother’s tales come true, she thought. How often had I dreamed of the strong waters of Riverrun, rushing through the gate and the fish winking to and fro, the boats sailing right up to the walls…._ Sansa started. She had dreamed it because she had been told of it, she had loved the attention of her mother and wanted to keep her company longer. A certain way to do so was to ask her mother to tell tales of her childhood, and Lady Catelyn’s face lit up like a girl at a fair. She would sketch the scene, hands starting in her lap and then flying around, building the battlements of Riverrun and the many-colored sept, the grove where she and Lysa played fair ladies, and ending with an exhilarated sigh, glowing with happiness. Sansa loved that, and loved spending time with her mother, and she had extended her bedtime many a night by asking a question about Hoster Tully and his honorable, dutiful family. 

Who was to say that Arya hadn’t done the same?

She and Sansa had only recently had separate rooms before leaving Winterfell—Sansa remembered with shame how she’d insisted on Arya leaving to find a new chamber before finding out the new room had larger windows that overlooked the courtyard. Then she had hurriedly brought her clothes over with Jeyne to mark the room as her own, claiming an older sister’s right to choose. Sansa flushed and resolved to give Arya first pick of the castle—whatever castle they found—when they came together again. Windows meant nothing. A view meant nothing, as long as she could see her sister every day.

Pushing her hair back, Sansa tidied up the bookcase. So she knew that Arya hadn’t begged bedtime stories from her father, at least when she was little. But who was to say that he hadn’t regaled her with stories of his youth in the solar, or around the castle? She had a way of getting underfoot, and would certainly use it to be close to one of her favorite people. Ned Stark had loved his willful daughter and would only sigh and attempt to redirect her energy before letting her go on her merry way, provided that she was in no danger and not daring Bran and Rickon to do something foolish. Sansa could just see it—Arya in the stables, swinging off one of the gates, and Ned overseeing the stables’ cleaning and telling a little tale of his mishaps with Robert. Arya had to know Father’s stories, and perhaps Braavos was one of them. He might not have gone, but he could have told her of the Titan, or the canals and the many temples on the island. And faced with the same empty map as Sansa, devoid of family or friends, she might have leaped off the map and gone into the far unknown, familiar through tales and unfamiliar in everything else.

Sansa paced. That sounded exactly like Arya. She was always the one to cut the corners, to figure out how to cheat without exactly cheating. Sansa had always played by the rules, but Arya always won. It was time to think like Arya and play the game her way—perhaps she was winning far more than Sansa was, these days. 

A gentle knock on the door, and Lord Baelish stepped in. “Hello Alayne,” he said with a coy smile. “How good of you to find a quiet room where father and daughter can…talk.”

Sansa hoped Arya had the winning hand today.

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

She was sweeping the floor with a new mantra in her mind. _The wolves will come for you. The wolves will come for you. The wolves will come for you._ She had a dark smile while she worked, but only when the kindly man couldn’t see. 

“And why do you wish for the gift?” the kindly man asked quietly of a young girl, hiccuping through her tears. “This is a gift that cannot be returned. Would it not be better to go home and see if your lover will come back, or if your mother will get better? Surely things can be resolved.”

Arya listened. The kindly man didn’t often question devotees of the Many-Faced God. Only the ones he thought were weak, and might falter halfway through, running away while crying. Or worse, at the end, with no running. It was important that the temple remained calm. 

“Buut—but-but—it is home,” the girl cried. “Too many siblings and not enough help, and not even a husband to help provide and certainly no one will take me now, not with four more mouths come along with!” She cried worse, snot running down her face. “It’s too much, it’s too much, I never asked for this!” she wept, clutching at the kindly man’s robe. “I just wanted to get married….work with my husband…. And now—now—now—it’s the _chores_ and the _cleaning_ and the _feeding_ but they don’t respect me none ‘cause I’m not their _mother_ but I have to _feed_ them but I can’t work and there’s no father—” she burst into tears and the kindly man quickly embraced her. No, that couldn’t be right. Arya tilted her head, and realized that he was holding her closely, and fumbling with a glass underneath his robe. She dropped the broom and ran over, uncorking it for him. He nodded and then forced the vial down the weeping girl’s mouth, currently blubbering all over his robe. “There, there, there,” he soothed. “This will help, this will help….” 

Arya waited to bring the girl to the kitchens to sleep off her calming draught. The kindly man pushed the trembling girl towards her. “Downstairs,” he said. Arya fumbled with the girl’s arms. “Down…” the man looked at her. “Yes,” he said. And the girl shuddered one last time in Arya’s arms.

Arya tossed and turned in her bed that night. Something….something….was niggling at the back of her brain. Oldest child, too many children to look after, made to be mother and father but no power to wield and no way to work…._Sansa._ She sat straight up in bed with horror crawling down her limbs. Was Sansa somewhere asking for the gift, surrounded by dead ends? Arya had options; Arya could be No One for a while. She would bend the Faceless Ones’ training to her will of revenge, revenge for Arya Stark. She could be one and not the other, and slip back into Arya when the day was done. Could Sansa? Could she put on another life? Did she have any talents to use, anything to offer? She shivered. The thought of Sansa getting caught by the likes of Polliver and Raff the Sweetling—bile came up in her throat. 

And should Sansa be someone else—would she have the strength to come back again?

Arya had Needle. She could hold it and remember Winterfell, and her brothers, and herself. Her strength, her suppleness, her razor edge. Sansa had nothing.

The wolves would come for Joffrey, Cersei, the Tickler…..but who would come for _Sansa?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First fanfic! I love both of these characters with all of my heart, and wish there was more friendship/sister-bond fanfics without the shipping emphasis that tends to turn one into a minor character in each other's adventures, or even a crude foil by making the other sister awful and useless.
> 
> Prissy Sansa that disapprovingly judges Arya for everything and can't get over propriety even when reunited with her only sister? Fuck no. Bloodthirsty Arya that has no emotions except rage and just throws herself at danger without considering any cunning alternatives? Fuck that. Sisters who have lost everything and still seem like book 1/season 1 selves with no growth, all contrast and no common ground or appreciation? FUCK. THAT. SHIT.
> 
> So it's a stumbling, bumbling first work, but please review--would love to hear your thoughts. And if you like women supporting women, women empowering women, women training women, stick around.


	2. Patience

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sansa plots. Arya deceives. Sansa deceives. Arya plots.
> 
> Hey, the family that slays together, stays together!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Y'all ready for the Stark sisters to start scheming their way out of their respective imprisonments that are chipping away at their sense of self, family, and reality?
> 
> That's right, fuckers. SCHEMING AHOY.

She moved backwards until she hit the bookshelf. “Lord—father,” she said.  
“Lord father,” Petyr Baelish mused. “I like the sound of that. Familiar…..” he said, stepping even closer, “but _commanding_. What should I command today, Alayne?”  
Sansa tried to straighten against the bookshelf and not feel like a prisoner against a wall, waiting for the countdown to release a thousand arrows into her. “The preparations for the lords of the Vale, surely, father.” She swallowed. “And for Sweetrobin to meet them at the feast.”  
Petyr Baelish turned and put his hands on the table, muttering a curse under his breath. Sansa breathed out; unlike Joffrey, an angry Petyr was not a lustful Petyr. “The lords are still intent on keeping the Vale in the hands of one of their own kind, naturally,” he finally said, looking up with a grin that failed to imply that he found the situation amusing. “It’s embarrassing to be unwanted at home and here as well,” he said. “I might start to think that people don’t like me.”

Sansa stepped away from the bookcase, doing her best to appear as if she was considering the matter while pacing instead of subtly angling for the door. “Sweetrobin has been told all his life that the Vale is impregnable,” she said, the child’s lisp ringing in her head. “The lords grew up as children thinking the same. They might grow older, but they still think the Vale will be safe only if nothing ever comes in.”  
Petyr tapped his hand against the table, watching Sansa. “A silly notion, but unfortunately effective so far.”  
“It’s a child’s notion,” Sansa stressed slowly, unsure of the path she was building in front of her. How to improvise towards her own garden gates in the presence of Littlefinger, the master of envisioning paths twelve, fourteen stones down the way? She bit on her lip, and hoped that he would take her words at face value, with only the scheming appropriate for a thirteen year old girl. “Children are afraid of strange things….but love novelty,” she said, thinking of Bran who had cried when strangers visited, but had treasured every strange gift they brought to her father. “If the right visitors came, would not the Vale welcome more of them?”  
Petyr was watching her intently. “We are here, and they hardly welcome us, my sweet.”  
“But the novelty….of a textiles merchant from Myr, from a dyemaker from Tyrosh, from a bravo….”  
He shook his head. “The lords of the Vale will never find that of interest, and hardly a reason to accept strangers in their precious mountains.”  
“The lords don’t _need_ to find it of any interest,” Sansa said, watching Petyr’s eyes flick up with interest. “As long as Sweetrobin does, my—father.”  
Petyr’s smile was as quick and malevolent as she imagined Dornish vipers to be. “Aha, my pretty little daughter,” he said. “It seems you’ve inherited your wits from your father’s side of the family. How fortunate.” He strode towards the door before suddenly turning again to Sansa, a knowing grin on his lips. She quivered, praying his bright eyes didn’t burn her up in their quest for kindling.  
“I see through you, you know,” he said quietly with an exaggerated whisper.  
She shook.  
“Pretty clothes…expensive dyes…brave, dueling men…only Sweetrobin would be interested, hmmm?”  
Sansa tilted her head away, letting her hair hide the tension she felt throughout her body. “I do miss the fairs at Kings’ Landing,” she said, trying to remember how to sound hopeful.  
“Bastard or no, my daughter gets everything she wants,” Petyr said chuckling as he started again for the door. “Because she only wants what her father wants, and _her father gets everything he wants_.” 

\------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“I have two sisters and three brothers.”  
“Lie.”  
“I have one sister and three brothers.”  
“Truth.”  
_Lie,_ Arya thought. She was slowly starting to see a way around the waif’s game. The waif was looking for the minutest muscle cues, thinking and blinking and the tiniest twitch of an eyebrow. _Roose Bolton would treasure you as a cupbearer,_ she thought.  
It was valuable to learn, but Arya suspected it was also an assessment of how thoroughly the acolytes had become no one.  
She had started out by thinking of her family, and then making small changes. _All of my brothers are taller than me. I never learned how to swim. My father and mother are alive._ But that meant the lie was always springing from a truth held carefully in the mind; the waif and the kindly man were waiting for her to cloak them in white wool and push them away, so that every claim she said would be independent of their eye color, their stature, their smiles. They waited for her to say she had a family, once, with hair as red as flame and black as the coal that feeds it and for that too to be a lie.

_And what do we say to the god of death?_ a voice asked.  
_Not today._

The waif slapped her. “You smiled,” she said.  
Arya straightened slightly. “Again.”

“You begin.”  
“I have a younger sister.”  
“Lie.”  
“My sister has blonde hair.”  
“Lie.”  
“I hate my sister.”  
“Truth.”

_Lie,_ Arya thought again. The trick was saying something that was true and false at the same time. She hated her sister, at seven and eight and nine. She had to keep in her mind’s eye herself at seven and Sansa at nine, snickering at Arya’s embroidery. Then the waif would say “true” because it was true, what Arya was describing. At that time, she had hated her sister.  
But how could Arya despise a wolf? The last surviving child of Eddard and Catelyn Stark? She could not. They had been night and day as children, true, their father had said so themselves. But in all the categories that mattered—northerner, child of Winterfell, unafraid of weirwoods and heart trees, _Stark_—they were the same.  
Sewing and swordplay had nothing on that. 

“I’m from Westeros.”  
“Truth.” But the waif sounded uneasy. She knew when Arya had arrived and helped smooth away her accent, and yet no flicker of her usual tells existed.  
_Because I’m from the north, you stupid cow. You wouldn’t understand._  
“My father stands today in Winterfell.”  
“Truth.” The waif’s eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly. Almost. Arya had a wolf’s eyes, and a wolf notices everything about their prey.  
Eddard Stark’s statue had certainly been cut by now, carefully, lovingly, by a local stonesmith with the input of Mikken, Ser Cassel, and everybody remaining at Winterfell. He would return to the company of Brandon and Lyanna in an almost perfect family reunion. _Hold on for me._  
“My sister is safe.”  
“Lie.”  
_That’s true that it’s a lie,_ Arya thought as she fought to keep her eyes from flickering with any emotion. _But not for much longer._  
She wasn’t going to wait for a stone embrace. She was a little too impatient for that.

\------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

_Patience,_ Sansa told herself as she entered Lord Baelish’s solar. _If you press too hard, he will see that you have a wish and ferret it out._  
Petyr was making notes on a document when she settled herself into a chair. _Dutiful daughter, always looking for what’s best,_ she recalled. _I want what I want because I want what’s best for him._  
There were some lies that she could not pass off as anything but false even in her own mind.  
_I want what’s best for my family._  
There we go.  
“How goes the plans for our novelties, father?” she asked timidly, cautiously meeting his eyes.  
“Better if they were cheaper novelties, Alayne,” Petyr said, sharpening his quill. “Not even your prodigious father can pull money from nothing. Close, but there must always be a little something to begin.”  
He liked her idea. That was good. “Are you sending out letters to your men in Tyrosh, then? Pentos?”  
Petyr scanned her with the same keen look he used for drafts of taxes. “So eager for new faces and new lace, hmmm? You have plenty of fine dresses, Alayne. Are you so desperate for another?”  
“It would be good to have a distraction for Sweetrobin. He grows...tired.”  
“Tiresome, you mean,” Petyr said, dipping the quill in ink again. “Understandable, dear daughter. I have not sent out my letters yet, but I surely will once Harry the Heir arrives. It will be good to have fresh blood after letting our guests stay the month, and they might arrive in time to serve as your wedding entertainment.”  
Sansa shivered. Patience would see her a slave with only one chain link again. She rubbed nervously at the spot where Tyrion’s ring used to chafe.  
“What about Braavos, my lord?”  
“Father,” Petyr chided, not looking up from his papers. “What about Braavos, Alayne?”  
“They’re a mercantile city.”  
“Obviously. Were you this dull with Cersei? No wonder she didn’t like you.”  
“You could surely hire men hailing from all of the Free Cities from Braavos, father. They are willing to travel for money, surely they would travel a little farther for certain money.” She watched anxiously as Petyr twirled his quill.  
“Bring me a map,” he finally said.  
Alayne thought of the marked-up map in the study with her father’s handwriting even as she rummaged through the papers on Baelish’s desk. _The other reason you might want to go there, Father, was because…_  
“It _is_ the closest Free City. Practically a skip over the sea,” he said, studying the map. “Far less time to arrive than a ship from Pentos or Myr. How much time would it take for a ship to reach us?”  
_A month, at most._ “I wouldn’t know, my—father,” she said demurely. “But it would be cheaper.”  
“Hmmmmm.” She daren’t breathe.  
“Alayne, you’ve won me over. What a good girl to find a solution for your father’s troubles. I’ll send out a message tonight, after I’m done with—” he waved his hands over the piles of papers on his desk—“this. We should expect them within two months, giving a bit more time for this wintry weather. Gods above, how I hate winter.” He looked expectantly at her.  
“Me too,” she said, knowing it was the right answer when he smiled.  
“Of course my little girl does. You’ll need new clothes from our far-flung merchants for this coming—_arriving cold.”___  
She nearly gave an Arya-like snort at his stupid redirection. But it gave her hope, too: he may think her too dense to anticipate the end of that sentence, but he still did not dare say the magic words for fear the pretty doll would come to life or the selkie wife would find her skin.  
She didn’t _need_ him to say the words. She had repeated them after her father, chanted in unison with her brothers and sister, sewed them into banners with her mother.  
_Winter is coming. _  
_Prepare yourself, Lord Baelish._

_ _\------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------_ _

Arya clung to the images of her family in her head. Each day they wore away a little more, but whether it was a natural forgetting or the training of the Many-Faced God, she couldn’t say. The waif and the kindly man weren’t fooled by her mannerisms, however. Although Arya had improved at the lying game, they could tell that she wasn’t letting herself go into the blank consciousness of a true servant of the Many-Faced God. It was a difficult game to hold tight to her family in her head and yet pretend to grow more and more detached from anyone.  
One night she woke up sweating in the fish seller’s house because he had asked her to help her sister and she _meant_ it. She had gotten up and helped the older girls and only later thought of Sansa.  
Was this how it was going to be? Holding onto nine years of memories for ten, thirty, forty years? How could nine years—and children really didn’t remember much before three, did they?—sustain her for the rest of her life? Only five, six years of jokes and dinners and dances and stories? She would never know anything else about her father than what he had told her, and he had only told her what she had asked. She didn’t know why he loved Jon Arryn so much, or what it was like fostering in the Eyrie, or if he played any tricks on Rickard with Benjen. She would never know. Jon Arryn was dead, Benjen was dead, her father was dead. No one could tell her the things she wanted to know, and no one would be able to tell her that her face and wild hair reminded them of him. She put her head back on the pillow and squeezed her eyes shut.  
Sansa was the only possibility of family left. The only person who could remember summer days in the godswood and training the direwolves. Jon might be out there, but she had heard it said that many a boy was killed by attacking wildlings at the Wall. If the frost didn’t get them first. If she couldn’t find Sansa, she’d suppose she’d go to the Wall to look for Jon, but the thought scared her because the alternative of not finding him would be the worst thing of all. 

__

__

_ _ What if Sansa was dead?_ _

_ _ She squeezed her eyes shut even tighter. She couldn’t be. She couldn’t be. She thought it might be good to pray, but why would the Many-Faced God answer a prayer for someone to live? They might strike Sansa down out of force of habit._ _

_ _ She rolled over and smothered her face in the pillow. She couldn’t be dead. She just couldn’t. No one would want her dead—_except for her name, her title, her worth, her status….._ Arya smashed the pillow up more around her face. So they might want her dead, but not because she had done anything _wrong_. Not like the Tickler. Or the Mountain. Or Joffrey. Sansa might be a good hostage, but they wouldn’t kill a girl who was polite and nice and smelled clean, would they? Who cooperated nicely and probably sang songs to her captors and sewed them blankets for the cold evenings?___ _

_ _ _ _ She snorted. The Many-Faced God didn’t care about embroidery skills. The devotees didn’t bother to examine their targets and reconsider the job; they did as they were told as quickly as possible. Others would do the same. She imagined, against her will, Sansa stabbed in the back as she bent over her stitching, or pushed her out a window as she looked at the scenery, or her throat cut as she sang…._ _ _ _

_ _ _ _Arya rolled over quickly and thrust the blankets over her eyes. The fisherman’s daughters wiggled and sighed. Her heart was beating louder than the Titan’s call at dawn. She had to train hard, harder than she had before. She had to be the most dangerous person in Braavos. In Westeros. In the world. So dangerous she would leave the temple on assignment and never return. Get to Westeros. Find Sansa with all of the spying and tracking skills the priests taught her. And then fucking kill everyone with a mile radius of her sister. _ _ _ _

_ _ _ _ The news of Joffrey’s death had arrived at Braavos and Arya had stalked around the city in a rage. She could not fail to kill another, those whose name she didn’t even know yet._ _ _ _

_ _ _ _ _And then?___ _ _ _ _

_ _ _ _ _ _ Well._ _ _ _ _ _

_ _ _ _ _ _ She’d get there._ _ _ _ _ _

_ _ _ _ _ _ She needed to master the life of the temple priests, first. _ _ _ _ _ _

_ _ _ _ _ _ And then she’d be able to face the future. With whatever face she wanted._ _ _ _ _ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for all of the awesome support on chapter 1! First fic ever after years (YEARS) of reading fanfiction and I finally decided to get brave and try a fic idea I was longing to see but hadn't read yet. It makes me appreciate all of those awesome writers we know and love TEN TIMES MORE. Consistent style? Canon details but interesting application?? Regular posting schedule??? AMAZING.  
Please let me know what you liked and what could use some work! And thank you again for comments and kudos, it was so much joy to find them in my inbox! Happy Thanksgiving :)

**Author's Note:**

> First fanfic! I love both of these characters with all of my heart, and wish there was more friendship/sister-bond fanfics without the shipping emphasis that tends to turn one into a minor character in each other's adventures, or even a crude foil by making the other sister awful and useless. 
> 
> Prissy Sansa that disapprovingly judges Arya for everything and can't get over propriety even when reunited with her only sister? Fuck no. Bloodthirsty Arya that has no emotions except _rage_ and just throws herself at danger without considering any cunning alternatives? Fuck that. Sisters who have lost everything and still seem like book 1/season 1 selves with no growth, all contrast and no common ground or appreciation? FUCK. THAT. SHIT.
> 
> So it's a stumbling, bumbling first work, but please review--would love to hear your thoughts. And if you like women supporting women, women empowering women, women training women, stick around.


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